I have a number of gift cards with single digit balances left over. Each card has around $5 on it; collectively they add up to a lot of money - $40-50 or so.

How do you guys use them? Can I go buy something worth $40 and use 10 of these cards to pay for it? Is that like paying for something with pennies? Or is the best approach to just use one of these cards for when I buy something less than $5? Pretty rare which is why they just sit on my desk. I need to purposely find something to buy that is priced less than $5.

They are just sitting in a pile on my desk - I want to get rid of them.

I guess it depends on who they are from, If possible I'd just use them up on Amazon purchases.

If they are all just debit type cards, I'd give them to a kid and tell him what's up. Or better yet the guy standing at the light near my office.

Without any disclaimer......

Are these gift cars assigned to a specific business? Or are they pre paid debit spend it anywhere?

If they are spend it anywhere cards, I'd just load them all up on Amazon and use them on one big purchase.

This is really the only choice I know of

Maybe there is a Nigerian prince that needs your help?

load them up in amazon? I'll take a look - I didn't know that was possible. These are just regular visa debit gift cards - great if i can use them collectively on amazon.

Yep, use them on Amazon. It works like this:

You can buy Amazon gift cards to load into your Amazon account in any denomination. Go to https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B086KKT3RX

On that page, there's a section above Buy Now on the right that says "Other" and you can type in any denomination.

Say you have $1.53 left on a prepaid Visa card. You load $1.53 onto your Amazon account, and pay for it using that Visa gift card. You now have $1.53 in your Amazon account.

Then you take your $2.77 Visa gift card, and do the same, adding $2.77 to your Amazon account. You now have a total of $4.30 in your Amazon account.

Do the same with your $1.08 gift card. You now have $5.38 in your Amazon account.

Etc.

Rinse and repeat for the remainder of the Visa gift cards. All these piecemeal Amazon gift cards are added up in your account, and the resulting total can be put towards your next Amazon purchase.

It's a little bit of a hassle, since you have to add each individual Visa card as a payment method for each transaction, and then remove them. But it's an easy way to turn these type of Visa gift card remainders into actual usable amounts on Amazon.

I buy Amazon cards digitally or rather reload my gift card balance if it’s the Visa type cards for the exact amount. You usually have to register an address with the card and sometimes it takes a waiting day before the charge works.

There are also kiosks on many supermarkets and malls that will pay you a percentage of each card. It spits out cash!

There are online companies that do the same thing, but rather than cash, they can deposit into your PayPal account, Zelle, Venmo, etc.

The easiest way I’ve found to use them is towards my cell phone bill. It’s just the easiest billing system I use to pay random small amounts.

-Rob

Save them for when Social Security calls to tell you your account has been suspended.

The self checkout stations at the grocery store I shop at will accept a card for less than the full amount of the purchase. I've used the last of several gift cards there.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Yep, use them on Amazon. It works like this:

Thanks!! I'll try it out.

Give them as gifts, like birthdays, Christmas etc. Wait and see how many call you and tell you the $50 gift card you gave them only had $1.65 on it. Most won't, and you have achieved your obligatory gift at a savings of upward of 93% or more.

Maybe use them for tipping? Use a magic marker to write a large dollar figure on each one, then leave the rude waiter a $1.50 tip.